Fulfillment Through Bringing Community Together

When there’s someone Jerry Houston needs to get things moving, he knows exactly who to turn to: Joan Trent.

“I have a full-time job,” said the chairman of the Powder Springs Community Task Force, “and I can depend on her really to make the contacts and do all the muscle movements of putting things together.”

Trent, a 46-year-old mother of two, started with the Cobb Community Collaborative a little over five years ago as both a consultant and volunteer. She would go on to get involved with the community task forces of Powder Springs and Austell.

“As I worked with children,” she remembered, “I learned that in order to really make an impact in the community, you have to have a whole list of approaches: working with families, children, schools, churches, and the business community. … In order to make sure our children are healthy and thriving, it takes working with all those other components to make it happen.”

And that’s what she said her main role has become with Powder Springs Task Force: “bringing other community partners to the table, basically.”

Before seeking out partners, though, Trent said the task force need to identify the problems in the community.

“Once we found that Powder Springs ranked No. 2 in Cobb County for child abuse and neglect, it was important to bring a community partner in that could help address some of the needs of families.”

Trent said something that really helped local families was the organization’s , where school supplies were distributed to children in need.

“It enables families to not have to worry about their kids not having the needed supplies to get started for school,” said Trent, who helped organize the event.

She also assisted in putting together the after-school program at the for Cobb parents who can’t pick their children up by the 6 p.m. deadline. Care is provided there at a “very reasonable rate for families,” she said, adding that it has become “a hub in the community—a safe place for kids.”

Yet another project Trent worked on was for Rajaan Bennett, a football standout and budding community activist who was shot and killed in 2010 at age 18. Last month, the task force and city of Powder Springs dedicated a bench and plaque to Bennett in the town square.

“We wanted to honor his legacy in the city outside the walls of McEachern,” she said.

And what’s most fulfilling to Trent about her volunteer efforts? Living under the philosophy “each one reaches one,” she says. “To me, what’s most rewarding is hopefully inspiring others to join in and help with the work—that it is beneficial and it does enable us to have a better community.”

Noting that Trent lives in Powder Springs, Houston said: “She feels like she has ownership there and makes things work in the Powder Springs community.”